Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Thiosk on February 12, 2012, 10:36:21 PM
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I love ground force management in this game. Yes, I do painstakingly rename each and every non-garrison unit, but boy, is it great. Theres a simple interface. You can click troops, move them from unit to unit, reorganize things, and double click the levels of headquarters to collapse long lists into easy to manage formations. When you want to pick them up and order them around, you can include subordinate units. Need a single regiment somewhere quick? Pick up the Valhallan 597th HQ and the four units attached to it come with. Uh oh, its time to purge the unclean, put X number of division sized transports in a task group, then order them plink plink plink to pick up x number of divisions, then grab replacements from wherevers nearby, then drop em all off on location.
To summarize; management, movement, and manipulation of ground forces is easy, accessible, and works quite well even for dealing with large numbers of forces spread over multiple planets.
This being said, I don't understand task forces at all. You have a flag bridge, and you like, put it on a ship. And then you like, put the navy office staff in there. That way, you have all the joy of the top brass actually being with you wherever you may roam. The task group cannot train properly unless there is an office staff somewhere (because we all know that none of us can do anything effectively without bureaucrats nearby) either in the system the ships are at, or on the flag ships. You put ships in different task forces through a drop down, but this doesn't seem to reorganize the task group lists in any meaningful way. Once you have the ships in the task force, if you move them out of the system in which the office staff is, they don't know what to do anymore, and act like fools and fail to train. And having separate task forces doesn't really seem to help anything, because all commands are given through the task groups window anyway, so one might as well just put all ships in a single task group and just forget about TF management all together. In stark contrast to the way ground forces work, I find TFs bulky, difficult, and not particularly accessible (yeah yeah, aurora is supposed to be inaccessible). I find them further irrelevant, because I can't design a TF, and then order them to "COME TOGETHER, where they would attempt to path from wherever they are in the empire to the TF center.
Im sure theres something about task forces I'm missing. But I simply do not know how to use them. Post in this thread with tips and pointers!
So what I wonder is, why not organize ships in much the same way as ground forces? You might remember MoO3 -- which was weird-- but one thing they tried to do was have mission ships and support ships and point defense all mixed in a logical way. I can do that sort of management myself-- if I want a grossly incorrect fleet formation, I can have it by golly-- but if I could click together a task force that would then fly as a cohesive unit when the FORCE was ordered somewhere, but that I was able to launch sorties-- for instance sending a beam squadron on a different trajectory without messing with the primary TF-- that would be really cool. It might also be interesting to have actual physical formations, where ships take up locations related to the center of the task force, but then they need not be running complex arrays of orders in order to do so. I suppose I can make use of the follow commands and some of the formation stuff to enable true area defense, but its awfully bulky. I'd love to be able to design a fleet from the bottom up, and then have the fleet be able to fly and fight the same way all the time. Regardless of how it would look, the idea of having levels of ships with levels of officers, and then assembling them for both movement and their relative positions in space are quite powerful and interesting.
My ideas here aren't really thoroughly shown, but I wanted to get some discussion going.
edits:
When i build a division, it has personality. I have legions that are composted of entirely heavy assault troops, and divisions that are composed of a more modest mix of offensive and defensive units. When a unit is lost from the division, it can be replaced, but never forgotten. I just don't think fleets work this way, and I think thats a shame, because this is primarily a fleet game-- not a ground force game.
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the real secret - if you haven't discovered it yet - is the Naval Organization screen. It lets you recreate task groups as needed and reorganize by moving groups around the tree.
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Woah-- what is THIS now?
Do you usually use this screen to manage fighters then? I've found it far too cumbersome to detach and move fighters manually through the basic f12 screens...
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I believe so, though honestly i haven't extensively used parasite warships in any of my games so far.
It would be lovely if this screen had drag and drop but it works pretty good asis :)
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I can fully second what Thiosk described.
I, too, go through the constant renaming of all my ground forces (although with less warhammer cameo) and organise them hither and yon all day long, but fleets are hard to organise in a comparable way. It does feel like there is little to no management beyond the task force level and even the flag staff level is a little wonky in my opinion. (To date I haven't figured out how to actually change the staff a task force is assigned to - it just doesn't acknowledge my change in the task force screen.)
This pretty much results in me not bothering with fleet detachments and superior task forces - my fleets train in my home system and then move out, usually without a ship containing a flag bridge and staff. I also never detach area defense ships, but simply reverted to missile and final fire defenses due to the micromanagement and alphabetical order in which the fleets are organised (which is far from how they actually relate to one another in about 95% of the time). For the same reason I stopped using carriers after a while - With how effective missiles are, it seldomly matters whether I fire at them from a bomber or battleship, at least with the AI.
The Naval Organisation tab is a bit misleading, in my opinion. It allows to organise ships in a meaningful way, but it seems entirely superficial right now. You have to add all task forces manually to the headquarters and no changes you do here actually impact any organisatory statistic of the ships or task groups from what I can tell. It's also a little weird in my opinion that bonuses only apply to ships in the same system - My Terra HQ usually contains a branch for logistics, a branch for auxilliary and one for defense forces. Since my active fleets rarely operate in my home system, I don't even bother with putting them in there. The logistics and auxilliary forces also leave the system daily, so to actually utilise the bonuses from the HQ I'd have to constantly change the assignment of all task forces whenever they do a jump (which is either a pain in the ass or just a waste of time since the change isn't recognised in the task force screen).
So yeah, I just pretty much stopped bothering with the in-game stuff an do the whole fluff in my head.
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The advantage of using the naval organization screen is that you can group your ship into useable hierarchies, which lets you form and absorb detachments on the fly. Thus I have a massive task group at my HW titled Reserves, and I can view all my training task groups with a few clicks, and I can form an ad hoc taskgroup that's matched in technology/loadout/training/age/capability without much effort at all. When I reach a system I can easily detach small operationally viable groups for specific tasks.
If you want active fleets to benefit from task force bonuses, you will probably need to create a command ship (Jump cruisers are ideal) and use it as a task force flagship. To be honest im not even sure what most of those bonuses do and that's not why I use the naval organization screen. Heh. I use it so I can see the disposition of my forces on various tasks and reorganize them relatively quickly and efficiently.
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the real secret - if you haven't discovered it yet - is the Naval Organization screen. It lets you recreate task groups as needed and reorganize by moving groups around the tree.
I can't find that screen. Do you mean one of the options under Military Organization in the Empire menu?
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I can't find that screen. Do you mean one of the options under Military Organization in the Empire menu?
Last (4th) tab on F12 screen, IIRC.
John
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Last (4th) tab on F12 screen, IIRC.
John
lol, I've never used that. Thanks! Will try it next time I play :)
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This is an interesting window but I have not even scratched the surface on how to use it effectively.
Somewhat strange I can't seem to remove a ship from a branch one I get it in there, I just delete the whole branch.
My plan is to set each branch up with a squad jumpship, PD, and a mission ship(s) of some sort. If I assemble the fleet into a single TG, and order a squadron jump, will the various branches each be arranged around their respective branch jumpship? How would such a transit work?
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You have to divide the fleet into groups before Squadron jumps. However the naval organization tab makes this fairly painless. Here's a (partial) example of how I might organize a fleet.
1st Expeditionary Fleet
- 101st Screening Division
- 102nd Screening Divison
- 3rd Carrier Division
- 320th FAC Sqdn
- 321st FAC Sqdn
- 322nd FAC Sqdn
In practice, I'll initially create a TG with the ships I want in a division. The 3rd carrier division above for example might have 3 CVLs and a jumpship. Then I'll select the appropriate line in the organization and select "add TG". After doing the same with the other divisions I now have the tools needed to manage the fleet.
Now to actually make use of this, assuming all the ships are in the same location, some examples:
- Select the top level and hit "Branch + Sub". I've now got a TG called "1st Expeditionary Fleet" with all ships from all divisions.
- I want to give some PD elements to cover a ground invasion. Select 101st screening division and hit "Branch Only". Those ships detach from the main fleet into their own TG named "101st screening division"
- I have a precsursor contact so I select the 320th FAC Sqdn under the 3rd Carrier Divison. Hit "branch only" and I've got a TG of 6 strike gunboats and their scout leader. Send 'em off to take care of the threat and give them a "land on assigned mothership" order when I'm done.
Now in your squadron jump scenario, I'd just detach the divisions/squadrons as desired and give them squadron jump orders. Keep in mind in a typical contested warp point scenario you won't want to sqadron jump the whole fleet at once anyway. I want to send in my escorts and cruisers, not my carriers, tankers and colliers.
To answer your question about removing a ship, just assign it to another branch; a ship can only be in one branch at a time.
There are lots of ways to use this stuff. For instance I generally have a main Logistics Command branch, with Cargo, Colony, Terraforming, etc. Divisons. Then I might have freighters in 10 ship groups under the Cargo Divison. That way I can easily select a good sized group for a task, but when they are just idling above my home world they sit in the "cargo Divison" TG without cluttering up my system view.
Note that when it is all set up, I rarely have to create a TG manually. The real trick to reduce micromanagement when setting up is to create the TGs (probably with "split TG") and to use the add TG button. Adding ships individually to the organization outline is a pain.
Now ask me how I organize my survey fleets. ;)
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Now ask me how I organize my survey fleets. ;)
I'll bite, how do you organise your survey fleets?
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I'll bite, how do you organise your survey fleets?
Well, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek actually. Not really a specific "trick" with the Naval Organization tab (thought they're in there), but in more a general way to manage large scale surveying without micromanagement hell. Surveying (especially geo-surveying) is fiddly so I like to set things up so I don't have to issue a bunch of orders to lots of TGs; or have too many designs.
In my current game, I've got two designs: a jump-capable exploration cruiser that has both Geo/Grav Sensors (this is important). And a small commercial geosurvey craft. The exploration cruisers generally operate solo with 'Survey Nearest Survey' location orders. They've also got geosurvey sensors so they can check out interesting looking planets for ruins (with a sensor probe first), but generally leave the mass mineral survey tasks to the Geosurvey groups.
My geo groups consist of one of the EX cruisers to act as jump tender, plus 5-6 of the GEO ships.
Default orders are: 'Survey nearest body', and 'Follow higher fleet in system'. Using 'transit and divide ships' as the transit order into the target system, which passes the default orders down to the sub fleets. So each ship goes and surveys, and then when they're all done they gather around the EX cruiser again. Hit the 'assemble' button and they're off to the next system. Only have to touch them to move them to a new system, and I don't have to constantly fiddle with default orders. That's why it's important that the tender also has Geo sensors, so it can accept the same defaults as the GEO ships without event log spam. Now it doesn't have a parent fleet so it does complain about that default order triggering; which is your signal that they're wrapping up and need a new destination system.
Now if only 'assemble sub-fleets' was a conditional order it might be possible to arrange it to queue up several systems in a row. Even still, this method keeps things sane and I can mostly ignore surveying except for interesting results (and enemy contacts of course).
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I like it. I'm glad this tab exists, because I was getting sad about my fleets. They shall be reorganized.
Perhaps that conditional order needs a suggestion.
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Well, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek actually. Not really a specific "trick" with the Naval Organization tab (thought they're in there), but in more a general way to manage large scale surveying without micromanagement hell. Surveying (especially geo-surveying) is fiddly so I like to set things up so I don't have to issue a bunch of orders to lots of TGs; or have too many designs.
In my current game, I've got two designs: a jump-capable exploration cruiser that has both Geo/Grav Sensors (this is important). And a small commercial geosurvey craft. The exploration cruisers generally operate solo with 'Survey Nearest Survey' location orders. They've also got geosurvey sensors so they can check out interesting looking planets for ruins (with a sensor probe first), but generally leave the mass mineral survey tasks to the Geosurvey groups.
My geo groups consist of one of the EX cruisers to act as jump tender, plus 5-6 of the GEO ships.
Default orders are: 'Survey nearest body', and 'Follow higher fleet in system'. Using 'transit and divide ships' as the transit order into the target system, which passes the default orders down to the sub fleets. So each ship goes and surveys, and then when they're all done they gather around the EX cruiser again. Hit the 'assemble' button and they're off to the next system. Only have to touch them to move them to a new system, and I don't have to constantly fiddle with default orders. That's why it's important that the tender also has Geo sensors, so it can accept the same defaults as the GEO ships without event log spam. Now it doesn't have a parent fleet so it does complain about that default order triggering; which is your signal that they're wrapping up and need a new destination system.
Now if only 'assemble sub-fleets' was a conditional order it might be possible to arrange it to queue up several systems in a row. Even still, this method keeps things sane and I can mostly ignore surveying except for interesting results (and enemy contacts of course).
How do you ensure that the Jump Tender always remains as the parent fleet? Unless my memory is faulty, I had the problem where Aurora randomly assigned which ship is parent fleet and which isn't.
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Does it not stick if you simply put the jump tender in the parent branch?
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How do you ensure that the Jump Tender always remains as the parent fleet? Unless my memory is faulty, I had the problem where Aurora randomly assigned which ship is parent fleet and which isn't.
actually you're right. The parent fleet isn't always the jump tender. It still works though since the whole point is for them to gather in the same spot. In that case it will be one of the GEO ships instead. Can still just hit assemble and go.
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Ah, right, your jump tender had geosurvey sensors.
I had a single-purpose Jump Tender accompanying survey ships. When they entered a system, I did pretty much what you did - then I'd manually cancel the Jump Tender's orders and move it to the next JP I wanted to go through. When the geosurvey was done, I had to manually order the GeoSurvey ships to join up with the jump tender. A hassle.
Next time, I'll follow your example. Sounds quite hassle-free.
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Yes, I used to do it that way too. and was sick of having to set the tender's default orders all the time. Having everyone in the fleet have geo sensors make it a lot less troublesome.
Not to mention, since I use the same design for independent grav-survey exploration, having geo sensors lets them check out the habitable worlds immediately when exploring a new system without having to wait.
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as time goes buy i add a ship with a solarium harvestor a colonizer with colonists and a infurstructure on board and if u have a few a refinery. Bounce several systems out and setup base. Rapid expansion and all that.
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OK so I've been digging through fleet command windows here. I think I have noted a few more features that I havent used. First, escort. The threat axis is in the direction of the fleet destination. So you can set up some PD craft to escort at 60,000 km, theres easy buttons to click and select these things on the F12 window. Suddenly area defense is viable without needing lots of clicking.
Does anyone use the escort functions? Would you like to post some tips and tricks?
Escorting opens up a few interesting strategies I might play with. I tend to build my main PD ships ships pretty large-- generally 4 full-sized quad gauss turrets. I've noted that in recent games, while the aliens like to hit my giant active sensor platform (he pings loudly) they also seem to really target the 16kton PD cruisers heavily. In an escorting area defense mode, this would constitute a weakeness, as they wouldn't have the support of the rest of the fleet and the full attention of their brethren. However, if one were to install a cloaking device on the ship, the escort ships would be less likely to be targeted at extreme ranges. Missiles would more likely target the core of the fleet, and let the cloaked area defense do their duty.
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I use the escort function quite often on my area defense ships.
For Gauss armed PD boats I just leave them with the main fleet in final defensive fire mode, they don't have the range to have it be worth sticking them in front on an area defense setting.
For Laser/Particle Beam ships at higher tech levels I've found they can be quite good. You need significant range tech, but you can stick them several hundred thousand km out in front of the main fleet and they'll get lots of extra shots on inbound ordinance. Of course they can run into some problems if they get targeted.
AMM boats go way out in front, if my AMMs have a range of 2m km I'll often sit them close to that far out front of the main fleet. The only problem I've found with this is that if you're getting absolutely swamped with missiles and some slip past them, then they can start wasting a lot of shots by firing 'backwards' too late to catch their target before it impacts.
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OK so I've been digging through fleet command windows here. I think I have noted a few more features that I havent used. First, escort. The threat axis is in the direction of the fleet destination. So you can set up some PD craft to escort at 60,000 km, theres easy buttons to click and select these things on the F12 window. Suddenly area defense is viable without needing lots of clicking.
Does anyone use the escort functions? Would you like to post some tips and tricks?
Escorting opens up a few interesting strategies I might play with. I tend to build my main PD ships ships pretty large-- generally 4 full-sized quad gauss turrets. I've noted that in recent games, while the aliens like to hit my giant active sensor platform (he pings loudly) they also seem to really target the 16kton PD cruisers heavily. In an escorting area defense mode, this would constitute a weakeness, as they wouldn't have the support of the rest of the fleet and the full attention of their brethren. However, if one were to install a cloaking device on the ship, the escort ships would be less likely to be targeted at extreme ranges. Missiles would more likely target the core of the fleet, and let the cloaked area defense do their duty.
Using the escort functions you can set a specific contact as the threat axis, so your escorts will maneuver to keep themselves between your main body and that enemy contact. You can set different threat axis for different escorts. You can also protect ships, such as a tanker perhaps, by setting the angle to 180 degrees so that ship will attempt to maneuver to place itself on the far side of the main body from the contact you designate as the threat. Finally, you can set up scouts, perhaps 30 degrees either side of the line of advance, and have them maintain position a few million kilometers ahead of the fleet.
Steve
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Bring on the point defense cannons for those pesky missiles just need a lot of em
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Using the escort functions you can set a specific contact as the threat axis, so your escorts will maneuver to keep themselves between your main body and that enemy contact. You can set different threat axis for different escorts. You can also protect ships, such as a tanker perhaps, by setting the angle to 180 degrees so that ship will attempt to maneuver to place itself on the far side of the main body from the contact you designate as the threat. Finally, you can set up scouts, perhaps 30 degrees either side of the line of advance, and have them maintain position a few million kilometers ahead of the fleet.
Steve
I started putting up some meson-based point defense ships (I had some quad turrets already researched, with some high range+tracking speed firecontrols) for use in an escort role.
Well, one turret ain't enough to justify all the shielding, engines, fuel storage, armor, and crew needed for an antimatter area defense escort traveling at 16 kkm/s right? Sadly, sticking two on there means I have a 10,000 ton escort.
As a secondary idea, I'm toying with the concept of making really cheap, sub 5k ton ships, if I have to cut to triple or dual cannon from the quads that is fine with me. The question is: do I have to train these suckers? They'll have paper thin shields and will be treated as disposable-- I don't want to train disposables! I normally train fleets up to 100%, but the escorts are separate from the main fleet, so they won't hamper the main flee'ts movement. Will they have big delays flying in fleet formation even without training? Otherwise, I'll just craft the area defense cruisers to have four duallies on em and leave it at that.
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Well, if they are small and have light shields and only AMM sensors they won't have the same signature as your major combatants, so theoretically the NPRs won't target them early during fights, which should offset their fragility.